


price of freedom

by v3ilfire



Series: i fought the war, but the war won [7]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, that's my whole MO, this is me rewriting the scene after alone because i can gdi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-08 03:42:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14685726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/v3ilfire/pseuds/v3ilfire
Summary: There was a conversation Fenris went back to whenever the world reminded him of the chains that were still around his ankles, whether that meant slavers on his heels or nightmares that were just a little too close to memories. It was relatively insignificant, Hesta probably didn’t even remember it, but he pulled it to the surface every so often.He had, in admittedly a bit of a fit, asked her if he’d even know real freedom if it ever came to him, as if she would know the answer to such a thing. On a night like any other, with both of them strewn across the floor as if someone had come and tossed them haphazardly in front of the fireplace, he finished one of his winding rants with what he thought would be a hopeless question. In response Hesta shrugged, lifted the bottle of wine to her lips, took a long swig, and told him to think of all the things he couldn’t do until he felt like he was free. And so, when he could finally do those things, that’s how he’d know.





	price of freedom

**Author's Note:**

> i'm depressed so here i am

There was a conversation Fenris went back to whenever the world reminded him of the chains that were still around his ankles, whether that meant slavers on his heels or nightmares that were just a little too close to memories. It was relatively insignificant, Hesta probably didn’t even remember it, but he pulled it to the surface every so often.

He had, in admittedly a bit of a fit, asked her if he’d even know real freedom if it ever came to him, as if she would know the answer to such a thing. On a night like any other, with both of them strewn across the floor as if someone had come and tossed them haphazardly in front of the fireplace, he finished one of his winding rants with what he thought would be a hopeless question. In response Hesta shrugged, lifted the bottle of wine to her lips, took a long swig, and told him to think of all the things he couldn’t do until he felt like he was free. And so, when he could finally do those things, that’s how he’d know.

The next week Hadriana lost her life at his hands and he foolishly thought that his defiance meant freedom, and tried to do something he thought he couldn’t do before. He ended up breaking Hesta’s heart in the process. Three years had passed since then, now three days since he ripped Danarius’s very heart from his chest, and consequently three days since he retreated into his mansion and refused to see the light of day. He was waiting.

Waiting for what though, he wasn’t sure. A feeling. A sign. Perhaps a Chantry choir would part the clouds and sing and ode to Shartan and break the metaphorical binds ‘round his feet. Perhaps the weight of bondage would lift all at once and he would take the first real breath of his life, and the air would taste different, and he would just _know_. Perhaps he would just sit there in a tattered armchair in a dusty room in pensive silence until he died without anything at all to tell him that what he did mattered, that he was finally free enough to live without consequence.

Fenris sighed and dropped his chin into his palm, eyes drawn towards the fire still clinging to life in his hearth. It could use a log or two, and the hearth could use a cleaning, but he could not bid his body to move, lest he miss his moment. If it would ever come.

Seconds after that, he was struck. Not by freedom’s bell as he’d much rather have it, but by the sudden dawning horror of his own foolishness. Of _course_ there was no lightning strike; for three years he had been chipping at his own chains and broke them without ever noticing. His moment came and went with the seasons and Danarius’s death was little more than justice for the carvings in his skin. All those years he built the Magister up to be the gate guardian of some fabled pasture only to find out that he was a small man whose life and death was barely a copper to the price of true freedom.

The freedom he had known for _years._

Fenris jolted out of his chair too quickly; his vision went black and he found himself wobbling back down into his seat, suddenly aware that he had not really slept or eaten - or bathed, by the smell of it - in several days. The sleep could wait, but the thing he had to do, that he _could_ do, that he should have done a long time ago, required him to not reek of himself or be delirious with hunger.

The sun was already setting when he began stuffing stale bread into his mouth, well aware that he would have to brace himself for a cold water scrub-down immediately afterwards given that there was no time to heat water for a bath. It was as unpleasant an affair as he thought it would be but at least it left him clean, if a little damp and frantic-looking, so as soon as he was dressed he ran out the front door and into the streets of Hightown.

For being a city so far north, Kirkwall got _cold_ at night. As soon as a breeze sent shivers up his spine Fenris hurried his pace until he was nearly running through the near-dark, trying desperately to outpace the chill already creeping under his skin. He made it across town so quickly he only remembered that he did not have a plan when the key Hesta gave him was already turned clockwise in the lock, and he found himself face-to-face with her two dwarven houseservants.   
“Well, good evening Serah!” Bodhan greeted him, as if this wide-eyed entrance was _normal_. “Messere’s out at the moment. Should I tell her you came by?”  
“No,” Fenris blurted out. “No, I… I will wait.”    
“Make yourself at home, then!” he said, and went dutifully back to scrubbing scorch marks off the wall above Sandal’s charred workstation. It appeared Sandal himself was relegated to sweeping the kitchen under Orana’s supervision, far away from his volatile apparatuses. A normal night at the Hawke estate, by all accounts.

“I will leave you to your work, then.” Mindful of the sudsy buckets near the stairs, Fenris swept past Bodhan and took the steps two at a time up to Hesta’s room, where he passed right by the perfectly available chair near her writing desk (which was presently covered in piles of oddly-sorted trinkets from all their various misadventures) and went to sit on the edge of her bed. Soon, she would inevitably walk through the door and he would find himself having to explain why he disappeared for three days and was now here, alone, without warning or invitation. 

But, at least for now he had time to think. He had moved with such imminent purpose that there had been no time to really recognize what his list of things-to-do-when-free had become. Life had found a way of shoving him into most of what he’d planned: learning how to read, defiantly emptying the wine cellar, expanding his wardrobe to more than the clothes of a walking trophy, among other things.

Leaving just the _one._

For once he knew what his end goal was, but _hello, I love you, I’m sorry, please hold me_ was a bit more direct than he was comfortable with and _definitely_ too direct to say to a woman whose feelings towards him he possibly irreparably damaged so long ago. Over the years Fenris had found a way to blame Danarius for what happened between them. He convinced himself that being a slave without a past ruined him and that no matter how he felt, he would never be capable of anything other than being another body in a bed.

And Hesta, being who she was, forgave him everything, and let him take the time to trust her, and to love her so deeply he began to ache at the sight of her.

Downstairs, the door opened and Fenris broke into a cold sweat. Muffled greetings were exchanged, and then footsteps bound up the steps, two at a time. Before he could think of a single thing to say, Hesta stood paused in the doorframe looking surprised but not displeased, which was a start. “I thought Bodhan was joking when he said you were here.”

When he could not come up with an immediate reason for his presence, she slowly crossed the room towards her wardrobe, cautiously stealing glances in his direction as she shrugged off her coat. Watching her shoulders as she rolled them back after what must have been one of her usually long days, Fenris swallowed a confession, and went on. “I… owe you an apology.”  
She cast a sideways glance in his direction. “And here I was hoping you were here to celebrate.”   
“The mood hasn’t struck yet.”  
“I like that _yet_. We’ll get you there.”   
"I’m sorry about the way I left. After everything that happened with Varania, I was overwhelmed.”

Hesta paused in the middle of unbuckling the dagger-heavy belt around her hips to look right at him, eyes full of a well-aged concern. A sudden, stupid impulse deep in his gut told him to press her up against that wardrobe and kiss her until she forgot all about it, but he could not imagine a single universe in which that would end well so he kept himself firmly planted on her bed, clamping his hands together just to stay grounded.

When he failed to elaborate, she went back to pulling smaller blades and smoke bombs from her sleeves and hidden pockets. “You don’t have to apologize. It’s not every day your long-lost sister betrays your location to a Magister.”  
“It is also not every day that someone stands beside a runaway slave to fight off said Magister.”   
“I promised you I would, didn’t I?”   
“People have promised me many things over the years. It’s the follow-through I still find surprising.”  
“You’re so dramatic. You have friends now, you know.”  
“I know.”

Once fully disarmed Hesta reached up and pulled the ribbon from her dark hair, freeing the half that had been tied up to fall around her shoulders and soften all her sloping angles. Fenris was well aware that he was staring at her, more than likely with the kind of stupidly enamored expression Merrill always dogged him for, but knowing that he was just breaths away from spilling his whole heart at her feet rendered him a little useless.

Unfortunately, Hesta was growing a little suspicious of the silence. “So, now that _that’s_ out of the way, I just have one question.”   
“Yes?”   
“Why are you _wet?"_  she said, and lunged forward to ruffle his hair. Instead of flinching away, Fenris hooked his arm around her waist like a man possessed and near threw her down onto the bed. He ended up hovering over her, nonplussed as she was, both of them a little flushed and a little breathless. Hesta lay frozen underneath him, suddenly looking as nervous as he felt.   
“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“I am…” he started, then paused, his eyes darting to the side for the sheer weight of the words in his chest. A deep breath, another pause; he could _feel_ her apprehension. “I love you. Madly. For a long time now. And I am _damp_ because I … needed to tell you that.”

In a moment of sheepishness he sat back, staring unfocused now at the fireplace. In his periphery, Hesta remained unmoving, her hands still clenched at her chest. As if on cue the commotion downstairs died down as well, leaving them in a morbid and uncanny silence until he cleared his throat _entirely_ too loud. “I understand if you no longer feel the same. I just -- I am yours, if you’ll have me.”   
“Sorry,” she said after another pause, “was that all to me or the bedpost?”  
Maker. “The bedpost, naturally.”  
“Ah. That’s a shame.” 

Hesta started to unfurl then; she propped herself onto her elbows before she slowly rolled herself back up to sit. Fenris turned to face her just as she drew herself to eye level. For a moment he was distracted from the lazy smile on her face by the way her hair spilled over her shoulder while she twisted to face him, but then his head remembered that she was _smiling_ and that smile stole all the air from his lungs.   
“You’re so embarrassing.”  
“ _Embarrassing?”_ he repeated, surprised even though he really shouldn’t have been at that point. She hummed an affirmative as she reached up to fix the very head of hair she had been committed to mussing up just a minute ago.   
“What will people think when they find out that any lover of mine dared show himself in Hightown with wet hair?” 

The wardrobe impulse kicked Fenris hard in the gut again and that time, he listened. Unfortunately he caught Hesta so off-guard that she burst into laughter before he could get within a few inches of her, leaving him stranded in her personal space with nothing but a deep and restless fondness. She apologized without really meaning it, the words lost anyways as soon as she drew in to meet him in the middle. There was just a moment of hesitation - from both of them - and then she leapt first as she always did.

And he felt _liberated._


End file.
